A
lot of the blogs and forums todayhave
been buzzing with comments about problems
Thursday at Sedo.com's
main website and their GreatDomains.compremium auction site. The

issues came
on a day when the company had a lot going on
including pre-bidding for one, two and three
character .de domains at Sedo and the
close of bidding in their monthly online auction
at GreatDomains. While unusually high traffic
for these events slowed server response time the
company said the bigger issue was an

orchestrated
distributed denial or service (DDOS) attack
that began near the end of the GreatDomains
auction and later reached a level that caused
Sedo.com to go down.

As
you would expect, a lot of clients have been
asking Sedo if the DDOS attacks negatively
impacted the results in their GreatDomains
auction. Sedo's North American Marketing Team
Director Heather Del Carpini told me,
"While the site was slow as the auction was
closing, our

bid
logs show the we did not experience downtime until
after the close of the GreatDomains
auction. We still received bids until the auction
closed, and were able to extend the auction time
for domains that were still receiving bids in the
last five minutes of the auction. Throughout the
auction bids were

high
and consistent, and in the end this GreatDomains
auction resulted in higher than average bids
and sales volume, easily beating the
numbers from our September auction. Close
inspection of the bid logs also reveals that the
number of bids in the last few minutes of the
auction is consistent with our other GreatDomains
auction events."

Ms.
Del Carpini provided us with some examples of
auctions that received bids in the last five
minutes and remained open for additional bidding
as the system is designed to allow them to do: Delusional.com,
Casinos.de
and XAI.com.

In
addition, Ms. Del Carpini provided us with these
statistics comparing the results from the October
auction that closed Thursday with those from the
previous month's auction (one that Ms, Del Carpini said
also had higher quality inventory overall):

October
Auction:

Item

Amount

Total Number
of Domains

135

Number of
Domains sold (=reserve met)

84

Sold (%)

62.22%

Sales Value
(USD)

227,396.67

Sales Value (EUR)

151,597.77

Sales Value (GBP)

137,241.46

Avg. Price (USD)

2,707.10

Avg. Price (EUR)

1,804.74

Avg. Price (GBP)

1,633.83

Total number
of bids

1463

Avg. bids per
auction

10.84

Total
number of different bidders

213

Total
number of different bidder countries

39

Total
number of different buyers

45

September
Auction:

Item

Amount

Total Number
of Domains

138

Number of
Domains sold (=reserve met)

62

Sold (%)

44.93%

Sales Value
(USD)

203,318.87

Sales Value (EUR)

137,675.28

Sales Value (GBP)

125,374.05

Avg. Price (USD)

3,279.34

Avg. Price (EUR)

2,220.57

Avg. Price (GBP)

2,022.16

Total number
of bids

1302

Avg. bids per
auction

9.43

Total
number of different bidders

264

Total
number of different bidder countries

38

Total
number of different buyers

53

Ms.
Del Carpini also noted, "We have invested heavily
in a robust IT infrastructure that can handle high
traffic, even during multiple auction events. As
mentioned in our earlier statement, we also protect
ourselves with a third party solution that worked with
us to minimize downtime and successfully fight the DDOS
attacks."

One
other note today, George Kirikos
announced in a thread at the DomainState.com
forum that he has resigned from ICANN's
Business Constituency. Over the years
Kirikos has done a remarkable
job of examining what ICANN does and holding
them publicly accountable for their actions.
Some of the issues he brought to light helped
stop or alter policies that would have cost
domain registrants an untold amount of money had
they sailed through uncontested.

represent
the views of businesses when it is captured,
top-down, anti-democratic, and actively
discourages participation." At DomainState,
Kirikos added, "I'll still keep an eye on
ICANN issues from time-to-time, albeit from
afar. Others might want to pay closer attention,
though."

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